


Hallowed's Eve

by Avelin



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: All Saints' Wake (Final Fantasy XIV), Fluff and Angst, Gen, How the Continental Circus came to be, I tried to write something fluffy and instead it became angsty :/, Last Days of the 13th Shard, Not Beta Read, Role Quest Spoilers, World of Darkness, halloween fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 21:57:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21260288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avelin/pseuds/Avelin
Summary: Boys and girls of every age, wouldn't you like to see something strange?An evening at the end of the world, spent in unexpectedly warm company.





	Hallowed's Eve

* * *

The pair of Warriors arrives in the dead of night.

They’re a boy, and a girl, and at least five people short of when she last saw them. Against the star sky, they seem infinitely small and broken on the threshold of her door.

But they _are _Warriors, and so they do not arrive quietly:

Screeching echoes far, far in the distance – a banshee’s cry, painful and full of rage. The lament, she knows, of a poor soul dying an immortal’s death, in twisted agony.

A soul, eternally hungry now.

Shadows yet drip from the Warriors’ weapons and the sleeves of their white robes like viscuous blood; _almost_ physical, _almost_ ethereal. They dissipate before they can sully her doorstep any further.

Behind them, clouds billow across the darkened landscape. They carry shades of the daylight, still – verdant green, rich purple, bright blue, the warmth of a sunset – but in the Darkness they mostly serve to swallow the shades of the mountains across the poisoned lake, because even the weather has turned ravenous. When the new demon falls silent, other sounds scramble through the darkness, _eager_ to fill the quiet: the wind howling through withered trees, the skitter-scatter of vermin, the slathering of maddened hounds and wolves and other beasties, growling, masterless – sometimes, because they devoured their masters. But also, less concerning, the sounds of children playing and laughing and shrieking with delight, just behind the curtain to the living rooms.

Light spills out of the house into the night, a golden hue to brighten the Everpresent Night.

Those are much more pleasant things to focus on.

“Good Witch, merciful mother of … of the night,” the girl pleads, wearily and like her voice struggels with any volume below screaming. “I beseech thee, may you grant us the … the succor of –”

The girl pauses, out of breath. The boy muffles a sob.

The Witch smiles.

“My hospitality?” she finishes.

The boy muffles another sob, but nods.

“Please,” the girl adds.

“But of course!” She clasps her hands delightedly and opens her arms and her door to welcome them in. “Come on in. Let the fire warm your bones.”

Inside, it is lively and warm and unabashedly noisy.

The stomping of children’s feet echoes throughout the house. Doors slam shut, slam open again. The wood of the ceiling vibrates from the force of a dozen impish orphans playing. Somewhere upstairs an argument breaks out, loud enough they can hear it through the walls – the screaming of two little girls insisting on playing with the same doll. She can hear her apprentice trying futilely to calm them down. Then, there is a flicker of magic (one doll turns two, a little clumsy creation) and soon enough the girls are laughing together instead of pulling each other’s hair.

Another door slams. Impresario hurries to the next rambunctious gaggle of troublemakers. The poor boy.

The Witch smiles to herself, pours tea.

The Warriors, weary and bright in her kitchen, are utterly silent in contrast. Understandably, they’re tired.

The girl – almost grown into a woman, the Witch notices, almost tall enough for her sword, now – pulls down her hood. She fiddles with the mask across her face, hesitant, but in the end she slides it onto the crown of her head and takes the offered cup of tea.

“Thank you,” the young elbe says quietly and sniffles some stubborn tears away.

She’s not only almost grown into a woman, but a _beautiful_ woman: long of ear and keen of gaze, jaw sharp and shapely. Her hair shimmers like starlight, even despite the tight braid she keeps it in. Only a frown mars her lovely face, a habit of worry and suffering. It twists into an expression of concentration as she blows away the steam above her cup.

Next to her, the boy sits dejectedly and doesn’t look up. He keeps his own mask over his vulnerable face, hiding behind it like a bone-white shield, and his hands are clasped in his lap. The Witch doesn’t expect a word out of him for some time yet.

He surprises her, however.

“The children – they’re not afraid?” he asks, voice just a little shaky.

The Witch blinks surprised. The tea cup clatters on the table as she sets it down inelegantly.

Somewhere upstairs a no doubt breakable piece of pottery crashes to the ground, and Impresario roars out a scolding above the shrieking laughter.

She knows _why _the young Warrior asks … but at the same time, cannot understand his need to do so: her home is a sanctuary, always has been. He cringes deeper into the shadow of his hood.

“No,” she smiles gently and sits down across from them. “There is still too much joy to be had for that.”

He tilts his head to the side. A query: _Joy?_

“But –“

“Unukalhai,” the girl says quietly, and her companion falls silent before he can voice his objection at all.

The Witch shakes her head.

“Sorry. It is just …”, the Warrior of Light mumbles and rubs wearily at his forehead. Above the mask, even though that would do nothing for his headache. “It’s just … they seem so _loud._”

“That they are!” the Witch laughs, while the elbe groans.

She shakes her head. “Forgive him, Good Witch. We have not been to a place this … lively in quite some time.”

The ceiling shakes some dust loose as right above their heads the stomping of a furious race starts up. The laughter doesn’t pass, and even her apprentice starts to join in. Unukalhai’s mask tilts up curiously.

‘Lively’ is the right word – and she is proud to hear it. Her home is a sanctuary, built on ground made sacred by her very conviction, land that belongs to _her, _is _hers_, and _hers alone_, and while she yet lives, death will have no place in these walls. Worry will not fester, dread will not stalk her darling children.

No one should be afraid in a sanctuary.

So, they are not.

What it means is that her children can _be _children. Can be joyous and loud without fear of attracting predators or the attention of … people they used to know. The Witch smiles, a little lopsided in her commiseration.

The young Warriors of Light, however, are not that. Cannot be that. Worn down and hopeless and bloodied, with Darkness staining their hands, they sit in her kitchen drinking tea made from the last of the apple harvest and cringe at every unexpected sound. Steam curls around his gloved hands as the boy gingerly takes the porcelain cup and cradles it against his chest, breathing in the warmth like something dearly missed. It breaks her heart.

“You do not need to apologize at all,” she says eventually. Says it gently, and the elbe girl blinks rapidly before looking down to hide that emotion.

She nods, though, and that is good enough for the Witch.

Over tea they tell her of the world _outside_.

It indeed is … bleak. The Witch has known, of course, but –

The Castle of Shadows has fallen. The Courtmage – an old, old friend of hers – had, at long last, succumbed to the Darkness infecting him and sprouted wings like a bat, his dying words dripping with that particular fear at home in nightmares. Apparently, his transformation was swift – but it called to the Cloud, and the birth of a demon from the remains of such a powerful mage let the entity swallow nearly the entire kingdom in one gulp. The last the Warriors had seen of their beloved Queen, Scathach had taken to the field, determined to buy her people as much time to flee from the Flood of Darkness rushing in that she could.

“She told us to run,” Unukalhai whispers apologetically. “And so we ran.”

That silly little girl, the Witch thinks sadly. A last stand, ultimately futile, against the forces devouring their world? Such bravery should not be rewarded with despair.

“What about your comrades?” the Witch asks, and the Warriors wilt.

“They…” the elbe begins, and sighs. She takes a fortifying sip of her tea, the cup half empty. “They are gone. And … and if they are not gone, then they are … destroyed. And if they are not that, then …”

“… we do not know.”

The boy sounds even smaller, at that.

The Witch sinks back into her chair and sighs as well. The laughter of her orphans sounds more distant, in the face of those burdens weighing down the Warriors of Light. So young – Unukalhai is younger than some of her most miscievous orphans, even. She frowns at him, his tilted mask watching the tea, but his eyes, she knows, watching her. She wants to cross her arms against the sadness, ward it off and deny it is here, but instead the Witch puts one dainty finger to her mouth. A motion of thought.

To pretend the world is not ending is just as foolish as trying to stop it, now that it is unstoppable.

And to pretend that the guilt isn’t there in every word her guests are saying, well… _That_ would be a _grave_ disserve to their determination to see it through to the end. To maybe, hopefully, find some Light in the darkness again.

Luckily, she has _just_ the thing for that.

She smiles. The fiery familiar in her oven shrieks.

The Warriors flinch.

Upstairs it turns suspiciously, _immediately_ quiet.

“_The time is **UP!**_” shrieks her oven, “_The time is **UP UP UP UP UP U-–**_”

The Witch waves her hand over her shoulder. The oven quiets down into a disgruntled wheezing. “_I just wanted them to know…_,” her familiar grumbles.

The girl’s eyes are wide as she looks from the oven to the Witch. Next to her, Unukalhai sits stock still. The Witch stands up and winks at them – two battle scarred Warriors, but also two children, still, in her educated opinion.

“No need to be alarmed,” she assures them, “It only means that it is –”

Then a stampede descends her stairs and right into her kitchen: a crowd of excited children screeching and hollering and already crazed from sweets and sugary confections, if their sticky fingers and chocolate smeared cheeks are any indication. They run around her table, jump up and down the empty chairs, hug the unsuspecting Warriors in a rush of euphoria and then immediately run to the counter, expectant. One sweet girl runs right up to her, collides with her hips and while throwing her spindly arms around her waist she looks up with giant watery eyes, so pleading the Witch can only laugh.

She opens her arms in a welcoming gesture, the good mood of her orphans infectuous. All the shadows have been chased away.

“Cookie time!” she declares.

The children cheer.

Unukalhai falls from his seat.

“Cookies! Cookies! Cookies!” the orphans chant. Under the kitchen counter, her oven warms up with delight at all the attention. It’ll make sure none of them burn their fingers on the fresh batch of sweets.

“Oh no,” her apprentice murmurs so long-sufferingly in the kitchen’s doorway. “Already?”

The Witch looks to Impresario, a mischievous smile on her lips. “What do you mean, ‘_already?’_, my dear? Now is the perfect time to have cookies, don’t you think?”

“_Cookies! **COOKIES!**”_

Impresario blushes a hideously bright purple – clashing with the neon yellow paint smeared across his dusk dark skin _and_ the unruly pumpkin-orange of his hair, impressive – and then hurries to help Unukalhai up from the ground instead of answering her. With practiced motions he dusts off the young Warrior and refuses to look at her, the tips of his long ears burning. His fingers look suspiciously sugary, just like the children’s do.

She can see it in the freckles on his face, the dear – he _definitely_ didn’t keep the children away from their playtime sweets like he was supposed to.

Oh, well.

The Witch turns to the young elbe girl. She’s now staring at Impresario instead of at the gaggle of orphans fighting over who gets the first cookie, a dumbstruck look on her quiet face. “Wha…?” she says very, very quietly.

“Thank you for the cookies, Mr. Oven!”

Then a boy barrels between her and her brother-in-arms, holding high a cookie and yelling triumphantly. His friends quickly follow suit, and the girl still clinging to the Witch’s waist – the first boy’s little sister, actually, a sweet pair of siblings – yells ‘wait for me!’ but only hugs the Witch tighter. The Witch runs a soothing hand through her hair. Slowly the elbe’s gaze shifts to the excited children piling into the living room.

“We usually tell stories when it is cookie time,” the Witch explains, “And sometimes, and I think today would be a fitting occasion, we dress up and try to spook each other. Will you join us for today? The spookiest gets to eat more sweets!”

The Warriors blink at her (well, she suspects Unukalhai blinks at her behind his mask), uncomprehending. Clearly, they are not used to this kind of liveliness at all, any longer.

“Why would you try to _spook_ each other?!” the girl asks slightly horrified, “And on _purpose?_”

“Of course on purpose!” the Witch laughs. “Spooking each other is the entire point. Join us – I promise it will be fun.”

“Good Witch, I don’t –”

“Please,” the little girl at her hip says earnestly. The giant watery eyes make a re-appearance, to great effect, “_Please_ join us! You have so many stories, don’t you?”

The Warriors look at each other, and the Witch cringes a little. But maybe …

Maybe making light of the horror, reframe it all in a story distant from their everpresent memories, will help them.

She hopes it will help them.

Because there is nothing more powerful than taking your fears and making them _laughable. _Than _realizing_ that the fear is _nothing_ if you let it be nothing more than that. Slipping into the skin of a ghost makes actual ghosts not as scary anymore, pretending to be the biggest, baddest spook around means the other nightmares can only tremble before _you _now. To be small but feel so big, to be weak but feel powerful… especially now, in these ending times, that feeling is _priceless, _the Witch knows. To greet the horror of the unruled Darkness with a smile does brighten a soul, and to greet it with a laugh brightens the world, this she believes with all her heart. Joy chases the dark thoughts away. Even if it will not save anything, it makes everything … bearable.

This is a sanctuary, and a sanctuary is safe – what better way to teach her children to not be afraid than to _let them be_ afraid on their own terms, when they know they are in no danger? When the time comes, she would not have them die in misery.

“Worry not,” Impresario says to the Warriors with a gentle smile. The girl blushes a dusty red high across the bridge of her regal nose, “The Mistress and I will be there, watching out for the kids. We take care that it doesn’t get _too _spooky.”

The Warriors look at each other again, but more considering now.

The girl nods. “Okay,” she says.

“Boys and girls of _every age,_” the Witch sings in the middle of her living room, holding a cookie aloft and her hat a little askew, “Wouldn’t you like to see something _strange?!_”

The orphans sing and clap and dance around with her.

She bares her teeth and bites down on the cookie, but doesn’t eat it. Instead she swoops down with it between her teeth, hands up and fingers twisted into claws, right into the face of a little boy. “BOO!” she hisses as loud as she can between chocolate crumbs.

He shrieks and laughs at the cookie pressed right to his nose, his slitted pupils blown wide from the sugar he already ate. His red-furred ears twitch with delight, then he bites down on the cookie. The Witch grins, lets him have the sweet. With quick fingers she attacks his sides with tickles and he shrieks again, running away from her.

She straightens back up. “**I**,” she booms with as much theatricality as she can muster, “am the Great Gourd and I am come to steal _allll _your cookies!”

“Nooo!” the children laugh.

Off to the side, Unukalhai tilts his head. A confused query: _This is supposed to be spooky?_

The Witch ignores it for the moment, swooping down again and makes mock-grabs at the children, stalking after them as they run away from her. “All your cookies!” she insists, “And when I have all cookies, I will take the chocolate, too! All your sweets, all!”

“Nooo! Not the sweets! Impresario help us!”

Her apprentice startles, and hurries from the Warriors’ side to the little girl. He kneels down to look her squarely in the face. “I would,” he says gravely, “except the Great Gourd has put me under a spell –”

“Oh no,” the girl whispers, eyes wide.

“—and now I am beholden to her! All cookies must be hers, to enchant them!”

He bops her nose.

“And now, you too, are enchanted,” he tells her, to her delight, “Rise up, my little minion! Let us go forth and strike fear in the name of the ogre pumpkinhead – the Great Gourd herself!”

A little touch of magic and – _poof, _a pumpkin sits where her head was, carved with a jagged grimace and eyes aglow with magic. It is entirely illusiory, but the children shriek in fright – exaggerated – anyway and the little girl obediently holds out her arms stiffly and stalks after her friends, howling in a voice she believes to be frightening, “_Give me your cookieeeees!_”

For a while there is just that – the laughter of children as they play a game of tag and eat sweets in an effort to keep them from being ‘stolen’. Everytime their pumpkin girl manages to catch another child, Impresario or the Witch declare them to be a new minion, and with a flick of creation magick and a little imagination they grow themselves a little army of walking pumpkins and ghosts, undead monsters swathed in bandages, skeletons and wolfkids who pretend to howl at the moon with great enthusiasm.

The children shriek and run and clamber over furniture, but one by one, despite their best efforts, they get caught. So the Witch takes to just painting spiderwebs over their clothes, declaring loudly that her magic cannot transform them immediately but they will turn into her loyal spiders – any time now!

Then she thinks that there really are not enough spiderwebs in the room to really sell the atmosphere and conjures a giant spider to weave them, to the mixed horror and delight of the orphans. The game of tag turns into a game of “keep-away-from-the-spider” for all until Impresario straightens up and gasps theatrically.

“The spell!” he wails, complete with a swooning motion, “I can feel it faltering! Quick, quick, or the Great Gourd will notice. Hide me, brave warriors!”

And he hurries to the two Warriors still standing apart at the side with their respective cookies criminally untouched, falling to his knees and holding out his hands in a begging motion. The elben girl yelps, unprepared.

“Uhm,” Unukalhai’s voice comes from behind the mask, and the children _pounce_ on that hesitation.

“Save him! Save Impresario, brave warriors!” they yell, and just like that the Warriors of Light are drawn into the silly game of pretend.

The Witch smiles.

Query: _This is supposed to be spooky?_

Of course it is not spooky to someone used to the real thing, the Witch knows. To someone who has seen demons rip out of the skin of erstwhile friends, who maybe even had to kill them before the transformation took all their humanity. Who hears the wailing of the damned everytime he braves the roads, alone in the darkness, weary feet on ground that may evaporate under his soles anytime now.

It is not even spooky to the children, not really. But that is because they know the Witch would never hurt them, never transform them and then _leave_ them in the new form. They know they’re safe. That knowledge is hard to shake, and she doesn’t want it to go away before it has to.

And also because they are hyped up on sugar already, joyous with a whole afternoon of no chores and only playing. Even the scary is a source of bliss then.

But the touch of someone transformed causing another’s tranformation, utterly and at once? Or the gradual cause of the spider’s webs getting caught in their clothes and hair, slowly doing the same as one bop of Impresario’s long fingers does? That is all to real. She would have them know the process, before it happens to them.

Her smile slides into sadness, even as Unukalhai _finally_ realizes the point of the game, and remembers how to _play._ Even as his elben friend blushes and takes Impresario’s hand, declaring him to be under her protection to the children’s vocal approval. One orphan – a wolfboy, furry tail waggling – runs up to her and hugs her knees.

“Great Gourd, they hide all your cookies,” he informs her tearfully and she gasps.

“We can’t have _that, _my adorable little wolf, can we?” she says, and taking his sugar-sticky hand she rejoins the festivities.

All her little monsters are dear to her.

Eventually all are caught, and all cookies are devoured, and their sugary energy crashes down. The Witch warms up some hot chocolate, and spiced pumpkin cider, to ease them off the sugar rush. Impresario and the Warriors, under her apprentice’s direction, collect all blankets and pillows from the children’s sleeping rooms and drag them into the middle of the biggest living room. They make a cozy nest, and those not too sleepy already jump with delight into the soft cluster.

“And now,” the Witch whispers conspirationally, “it’s story time!”

She lowers the lights.

_Oooh_, whisper the children.

“Who wants to go first?” she asks, but everyone is just looking to their neighbour, waiting for someone else to speak up. “Very well. Then I will start.”

A pair of skeletons rub at their eyes, tiredly smearing the paint and magic traces over their real faces. Impresario cards a hand through the no-longer-pumpkin-headed girl’s hair as she sags tiredly against his side, trying to stay awake for the story. At his other side sits the elben Warrior, hand in hand with him. He smiles a little shyly at her.

The Witch clears her throat. Lowers her voice, and with a touch of magic makes her words shake the very air.

Hushed silence.

She locks eyes with Unukalhai opposite her, bone white mask impassive.

“Let me tell you, then,” she begins, “of a night, not so long ago and not so far away. Of a night so dark and stormy they had to invent new words for its darkness and stormy-ness. Of a night so horrifying even the things that hide in the shadows dare not speak of it. Great and terrible monsters that delight in the fear of little mortal children and brave, strong, mortal warriors alike _quiver_ at the mere mention of it! But I will tell you now, my dear little monsters, so you may never forget…

Let me tell you of the Night of Devilry…”

The night goes on, the stars unfading. They tell story after story.

Some are tense, some … not as much. Sometimes the culprit is just a doll-thief instead of an axe-murderer hiding behind unclosed doors. But there is wide-eyed delight coupled with wide-eyed fright in every child’s face as the words make the rounds and the warm drinks slowly lull them to sleep. Haltingly, even Unukalhai starts to tell a story – barely gets to finish it before embarrassment steals his voice away and he ducks behind a pillow to hide, granted, but he does. It drips with memory, full of events he clearly tries to censor when he notices those orphans still awake hang onto his every word.

(_“He tells the **best** stories!”_ the children will tell her, later. Once he’s gone again.)

But eventually, all that fills the room are the calm sounds of children deep in slumber, dreaming gentle dreams.

The Witch stretches, fixes her hat.

She makes sure every child has a blanket covering them and a pillow under their head, even if their head happens to be already pillowed on someone else’s unfortunate body part. Impresario is hugging the two Warriors to each side, and with a mischievous little smile she makes sure _three _blankets cover the trio; they will not be cold when they wake next, that is for sure. She stands at the doorway to the living room, after, and watches their peaceful bodies for a while. A strange warmth tickles in her throat – the urge to cry.

The Witch turns and heads back into the kitchen. The oven grumbles a little sleepily at her as she takes the last cookie – saved just for her, the silly, sentimental familiar. Only one thing left to do tonight.

The howling at the fringes of her property has grown in volume and in frequency for a while now.

She’s noticed even before the Warriors of Light arrived at her doorstep bearing grave news. She can hear it, whenever she steps outside. The door will close behind her, and the laughter of her children will fade, the night still and quiet except for where it is _not._

The Darkness is not empty. The Darkness is hungry.

Tonight, the moon hangs low and bright in the sky. Today, tonight, forever; a sickly white shine through the fog of dispersing aether, too charged to hold its form. Dark clouds billow over the horizon, still carrying the scent and the texture and the shades of physicality inside them, the memory of what they used to be: forests, mountains, lakes, continents.

No longer.

Wind wails through withered trees, a living thing of its own. In the shadows gathering outside her fence a curious creature screeches, all teeth and too many eyes, but still keeping safely out of reach of the wards she has placed with explosive charge all around her home. Another slinks around the opposite direction, acidic saliva dripping into the barren soil. Even from here, the Witch can see the leaves in her scraggly pumpkin patch wilt.

She eyes them warily.

Those wards will not hold the hunger at bay forever.

Before long, the Flood will reach her orphanage too. Running is useless, when she can feel the Darkness in her very bones, can feel it burrowing deep into the earth and high into the sky. Nothing will be spared, nothing _is._

But …

The Witch thinks of Unukalhai in her kitchen, breathing in the aroma of apple tea. Thinks of Impresario and the young elbe with hair like starlight holding hands. Thinks about the little girl pleading for cookies with watery eyes, and the big-toothed smile when she gets her way. Thinks about the yelling in her attic over who gets to play with which doll and which toy weapon, the quickly forgotten animosity in the face of compromise, the play fights between rambunctious boys and girls, the wiggle of furry ears and the shine in innocent eyes.

Little sparks of brightness against the despair. They are worth _everything._

She would not have them die in misery.

She would _not._

When the time comes …

The Witch sighs.

She pours the last of the tea down the steps of her porch, and guides it with mere thought to flow into the craggy mud of her backyard. Intent makes it shimmer with magic. The soil itself glows – a short brilliant flash, blinding against the dark. The creatures creeping around her home yowl in pain and flee. The wards are strenghened once more.

Her home, built on ground made sacred by her very conviction. Anything and any_one _on these lands belongs to _her _and _her alone_, and while she yet lives, no demon shall cross its threshold.

This is a sanctuary. And sanctuaries are safe.

The Witch smiles, bites into her cookie.

It tastes like pumpkin.

* * *


End file.
